Clinton campaign snares Box CEO in courting young tech millionaires

SAN FRANCISCO, June 3 (Reuters) - The last time Hillary
Clinton ran for the White House in 2008, Aaron Levie was too
busy building his start-up company to pay much attention to
politics.

But earlier this year, the 30-year-old Levie led his
company, Box, through an initial public offering,
helping free a small portion of his time to support the
frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.
A few weeks ago, Levie, whose company is worth more than $2
billion, agreed to host a fundraiser for Clinton.

He sees big stakes for the tech sector in this election,
Levie told Reuters, on issues ranging from improving the patent
system to securing visas for foreign workers and limiting
government surveillance.

"There's more intersection between the technology industry
and policy than ever before," said Levie, whose trademark
mad-scientist hair showed signs of gray, countered by youthful
bright orange sneakers. He said he was backing Clinton because
Democrats' social policies, for example on marriage equality,
resonated more with him than Republican ones.

The campaigns of various White House hopefuls are looking to
reel in the younger Silicon Valley influencers like Levie who
could help raise some money for their candidates and also bring
along some of the tech sector's energy and cachet.

Levie, whose company helps store data remotely in the
"cloud," is among several young Silicon Valley executives
Clinton's campaign has been courting.

"Young, innovative entrepreneurs are key to growing and
strengthening our economy," said a Clinton campaign spokesman.

SILICON VALLEY A CHALLENGE

But recruiting tech entrepreneurs can prove a challenge.
Many lack enthusiasm for politics. For example, in April venture
capitalist Marc Andreessen told Fortune he was "struggling
between the anti-science party and the anti-economics party" and
felt tempted to sit out the next election.

Fundraising officials who declined to be named said they
hoped the imprimatur of a few will make it easier to attract
others, and Democrats have a long list of prospects.

"The next crowd is Twitter, Facebook, Airbnb," said venture
capitalist Steve Westly, who served on President Barack Obama's
national finance committee during the 2008 election. While some
of those companies have been around for years, many of their
employees are relatively new to their wealth.

Many in Silicon Valley gravitate toward Democrats, because
the party is seen as more in sync with the tech community on
social issues such as gay marriage. But Republican 2016 hopefuls
such as Kentucky Senator Rand Paul are trying to woo the
technorati on economic and regulatory issues. A packed room of
start-up workers at his San Francisco office opening last month
suggested he may be having some success.

Some big names in technology are already involved in
politics. Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo is a longstanding
Democratic donor, while Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg
gives to candidates of both parties.

COLLEGE DROPOUT

Levie said he has donated only once to a candidate, Senator
Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York. He still hasn't
registered to vote in California, his home for almost a decade,
relying instead on his parents to forward him his ballot from
Washington state.

A dropout from the University of Southern California, Levie
founded Box with some friends and ran it for a time out of his
uncle's garage near San Francisco before landing hundreds of
millions in venture capital backing.

Friends and business associates such as Emanuel Yekutiel,
deputy finance director for Clinton, helped spark his interest
in her campaign, Levie said.

The clincher: a May 1 meeting in Palo Alto where Clinton
campaign officials, including chief technology officer and
former Google executive Stephanie Hannon, met with about 50
executives and venture capitalists and highlighted the
importance of building a cash reserve for the campaign.

Among the invitees: Palmer Luckey, the 22-year-old
co-founder of Oculus Rift, a virtual-reality company bought last
year by Facebook for $2 billion, according to someone involved
in the event.

Though Levie says campaign support will take a backseat to
running Box, he weighs in on election issues with vigor.

Last month, he criticized Rand Paul on Twitter over his
comments at a congressional hearing where he compared the "right
to healthcare" to the enslaving of doctors.

"Dude, you should be a script writer for `The Hunger Games`,
not running for President," Levie wrote on Twitter, referring to
the movie about death matches in a dystopian, ruthless society.
(Reporting by Sarah McBride, editing by Caren Bohan)